Trailer: American Made

Trailer: American Made

Trailer: Hard to be a God

Based on the Russian novel "Hard to Be a God" it follows a group of historians from Earth pretending to be average people on another planet that is going throught its dark ages.

For much of Hard to Be a God’s 170-minute running time, Earthly historian Don Rumata (Leonid Yarmolnik) wanders a faraway planet that is stuck in its own barbaric dark age. Rumata’s wandering isn’t aimless, even if it sometimes seems that way: Arkanar is on the cusp of enlightenment, and the historian has been charged with the important task of protecting the civilised few who will push the planet in its proper direction. Aleksei German’s film is an adaptation of a Russian science-fiction novel of the same name, and was a long time in the making. The director sadly passed away last year, shortly before his movie was completed, but Hard to Be a God is testament to the careful labour that went into its creation. For much of the film, a slowly roving camera mimics Rumata’s own wanderings, exposing the surface of this imagined world in all its ugly detail. Plot is secondary to pageantry: figures and substances – sometimes identifiable, sometimes not – continually enter and exit the frame. The sound, produced by assorted bodies and pipe players, is also relentless. Hard to Be a God is an exhausting and occasionally repulsive film, which is what makes the experience of viewing it so transporting.